Electrical devices are used to receive and transmit radio frequency (RF) signals. For example, these RF devices may include back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) devices, such as vertical natural capacitors (VNCAP's), metal-insulator-metal capacitors (MIMCAP), BEOL metal resistors, inductors, T-coils, transformers, and interconnect transmission lines. These RF devices may be characterized, or measured for performance, using for example various network parameters, e.g., scattering parameters (“S-parameters”), admittance parameters, and impedance parameters. The process of extracting the intrinsic device network parameters from the raw, measured network parameters of RF devices is called RF de-embedding.
Current RF de-embedding of two-terminal devices (e.g., devices lacking an intrinsic-defined resistive path to ground) leads to inaccurate characterization parameters. For example, current RF de-embedding utilizes a “short” structure including two terminals shorted by a piece of metal and connected to ground, to obtain impedance parameters of a device. Specifically, an impedance of the short structure is measured and subtracted from a measured impedance of a “Device Under Test (DUT)” structure, including two terminals connected to the device being characterized, to rid the DUT measurement of impedances of the two terminals, for instance.
However, the impedance of the short structure may not be much smaller than the impedance of the device being characterized, which in RF de-embedding may result in an improper reduction of the impedance of the device. This often leads to an artificially high value for an extracted quality factor Q and an artificially high value for an extracted self-resonance frequency of a BEOL capacitor (VNCAP) being characterized, and to an artificially low value for an extracted self-inductance of an inductor. Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.